hope in the darkness
by Sorde
Summary: "The media won't stop talking about Bracken's brave last fight. Beckett can't think of a more cowardly way for him to have gone." Beckett's justice is not what she had hoped it would be. Season 6.


Happy New Year!

Title from Mumford & Sons' 'Ghosts That We Knew.'

* * *

_"But you saw no fault, no cracks in my heart  
And you knelt beside my hope torn apart_."

It's a very cold day in January when Senator Bracken dies.

It's not a heart attack (or a 'heart attack'). It's not poisoning or a gun to the head or a knife in the back or a knife in the _gut _in some alley in the Bronx or. Or a suspected murder at all, really.

Brain cancer, of the terminal variety. Glioblastoma, according to the report that Beckett gets from Lanie, spends hours poring over. Caught too late for any sort of treatment. Aggressive, probably, if the speed at which it took Bracken is any indication. It ends up blasted all over the news - "New York Senator Loses Last Battle" - but it's not the news she's paying attention to. She becomes something of a cancer connoisseur, doing her fair share of research online and talking to Lanie's friends and Josh's friends and then, later, any doctor at all who's willing to talk to her.

The media won't stop talking about Bracken's brave last fight. Beckett can't think of a more cowardly way for him to have gone.

/

The thing - the goddamned _awful _thing - about the whole situation is that, when the news finally hits, Kate Beckett is about a year and a half into the unusual experience of being genuinely, honestly _happy. _For the first time since her mother's murder, she's shed the shadow that came with it. She figured out who called the hit; she let that last hurdle sit, took her time to settle into a happy, healthy relationship with someone who makes her laugh, calms the burdens of being the woman who gets quiet and says, "She, uh, died. When I was a teenager," when people ask about her mother. She got a new job, an amazing opportunity for justice in a foreign city where, yeah, okay, she got fired, but for the right reasons. She got _engaged_, got the chance to prepare for her wedding and got to look at her entire future and plan it out. Got to think about a kid (kids?) who would be named Cosmo only over Kate's dead body.

The universe does not approve of Kate Beckett being happy.

She and Castle are in the precinct when she finds out. It's late - rounding on nine or ten - and she sent Espo and Ryan home hours ago, Ryan to a newborn, Espo to anywhere capable of getting the deep lines of exhaustion out from under his eyes. Of course, it's been months since even she and Castle have been here this late, but they're _thisclose _to solving the murder and both are kind of rooted to the spot. Even Kate can tell that they're not getting anywhere, not really; they're been at this for hours, and no matter how close they may be, the fact that they're both leaning on her desk and staring at the murder board speaks to the fact that neither has the mental capacity at the moment to crack it.

They need a break, so, naturally, she flicks on the news.

And kind of stops breathing.

"Hey, Beckett, a honeymoon in the Sahara would be fun, don't you think? "Naked Heat" indee- Oh." Castle's leaving the break room when he finally catches sight of what she's watching, and it takes him only a flicker of a second to go from joking to serious, his expression growing dark at first when he eyes the screen and then, when he looks at her, darker still.

She wants to- She wants _something_, wants air to enter her lungs most of all and for that expression on Castle's face to go away and to have a mom but... She inhales sharply but it only makes everything worse and even though nobody else is in the precinct it's still sacred ground, still a place where Detective Beckett is always in control and so she bolts for the stairs.

/

Castle finds her a few minutes later on the landing of the stairs, not even a full flight down. It's not the first panic attack he's seen and it sure as hell won't be the last, and he knows enough to give her a bit of space, give her an opportunity to collect herself enough to not give herself a panic attack over letting him see her panic attack.

It's a vicious cycle that neither party particularly appreciates, and he's excellent in the immediate aftermath, so.

When he catches sight of her, leaning against the wall with her head in the hands that lean against her knees, he makes some sort of noise that she can't quite place - is it more of a keening or a high-pitched sigh? - but when she looks at him, there's nothing but grief and understanding for her etched into the lines of his face. He slides down the wall next to her and she leans into him heavily.

"I wanted to be the one to do it, you know," he sighs into the silence, and the hard edge of the rage she saw on his face earlier curls into his words. "I just- You know, when you saved his life last year, I told him that you were extraordinary. That I wouldn't have done it. And since then I've plotted it a thousand different ways, but it was your justice to deliver and I... Just wanted to get back at the bastard every time-" He gestured grandly at her, "- This happens."

"Justice and revenge aren't the same thing, you know," she says, but it's in possibly the world's least convincing monotone and she suddenly can't remember why they _aren't _the same thing.

He gives that a second before he says, "You sure? The world would be better if they were, I suspect."

She huffs out a laugh, adds, "I'd be out of a job if nobody thought that like that, Castle."

/

The thing that even Castle doesn't think about (and the thing that Kate can't stop thinking about) is that, after fourteen years, all the dust has settled on Johanna Beckett's murder. It's been proven that it wasn't random gang violence, that a hit man was ordered to kill her, that it was in fact Senator William H. Bracken who called it. And now the man who ordered Dick Coonan to kill Kate's mom is lying in a grave somewhere in New York City, and there's really nothing left.

The anticipation of it all is gone; the constant feeling that _something _could happen at _sometime_, that one day the intangible _someday_ would become a date to look back on, celebrate. All gone.

But it's not replaced by a feeling of justice, of finally coming to the last stage in her mother's murder and ticking off _acceptance _at the end. It's just that, one day, while Kate was joking with her fiancé at her job, the end slipped into a hospital room quietly and put the last piece to rest without her consent. And just like there was no finality to her mom's death (just a case of a knock on the door and "Oh, whoops, your mom's dead, good luck not letting that define the rest of your life,") there's no finality to solving her murder.

/

"Kate." It's nearing midnight when Castle's voice finally breaks the hours-long silence of the precinct one night in March. "C'mon. It's time to go home."

She screws her lips together, gives herself zero-point-eight seconds to collect her bearings before she growls, "Castle, we're just missing something obvious. Just the last piece of the puzzle." Kate goes back to staring at the board, eyes flickering over each of the images individually. They've been at this case for weeks, and none of the evidence lines up properly and she can see it in Castle's face when he turns to look at her instead of at the murder board; it's a dud. Gates is bound to shut it down tomorrow, bound to box it up and shove it into the depths of the archives.

"Beckett." When she doesn't turn to look at him, he changes tones, makes it softer, pleading. "_Kate_. We haven't been home before midnight in weeks. You need to let this one rest. At least until tomorrow."

"I'm fine, Castle," she bites out, very purposefully doesn't look at him. Her hands twist together, right thumb brushing over her father's watch.

He tries a different tactic. "We haven't even had the chance to finish planning the wedding. And it's in two months!"

At that, she does turn to look at him, rounding on him next to thei- her desk. "So?" she growls. It takes her a second to register his face, the hurt that creeps in and he recoils from her, runs a hand through his hair.

"So I thought that meant something to you. My mistake."

They've had enough fights, enough shouting matches like this, that Kate can recognize the signs as they come. She's prone to hiding things in self-preservation - "I've had to scratch and claw for every inch" rings in her ears every time she does it now, makes her want to be better - and Castle's avoids, hides his feelings with jokes and storms out when it gets too much for him. He's turned his body towards the elevator, and his eyes flicker there and back, tracing a path from his body to his escape.

"Castle," she sighs, reaching out for him. He recoils further, and she echoes his earlier tone. "_Rick._ You know I didn't mean it like that. I know you've been doing a bit more of the planning that you thought you'd be doing these last couple of months."

His body relaxes a little bit, cants toward her. "Well, floral arrangements aren't exactly my thing," he offers, steps closer.

"Really? So all the flowers you've given me over the years haven't been beautifully arranged?"

"I have been living with women my whole life," he concedes.

"Mm, and haven't I been reaping the benefits of that fact," she murmurs. There's a beat, then, "I'm sorry. I know we've been spending a lot of time here. I just want-"

He finishes for her. "Justice. For the victims."

A nod, then, "But I'll be better. I promise."

/

She is not better, but she certainly hides it better. Sends Castle home early to make dinner and follows him a couple of hours later. Sneaks the files out from her bag when he falls asleep and spends her hours poring over them until the morning light creeps through the windows of his office.

He only catches her at it a couple of times, walking into the room a little sleep-ruffled, hair sticking up adorably in all directions, muffling a yawn behind his hand as he peers at her sitting at his desk, a makeshift murder board spread over the expanse of it. She's good on her toes, assures him that it was just a case of a nagging feeling keeping her from sleeping - a one-off thing. It's harder to sell the second time, harder yet the third, but she suspects that Castle always expected to lose her to her mom's case, not to lose her to every other one, so he (grudgingly) buys it, and either goes back to bed or sits on the couch in the office and helps her until he falls asleep there.

/

In late April, the weather is deemed reasonable enough to finally go through the motions of moving Kate's stuff from her apartment to the loft.

'Going through the motions' only, of course, because she's been effectively living at the loft since late October. Most, if not all, of her clothes are there already, and small objects, like her favourite coffee mug and a pile of her books, have been moved gradually, too, and with a month to the wedding there's really no reasonable excuse to _not_ live full-time in the loft, so she and Castle head over there one Saturday afternoon to pack all of her stuff into boxes for the movers.

She's been good, with the whole wedding thing, she really has. Perhaps she hasn't thrown herself into it with as much gusto as she had in the New Year, but she's been helping and planning it and shaking her head at Castle's ludicrous plans and picking out colours and the like. She can remember only one other time when she'd been this exhausted, running on mounds of coffee and about three hours of sleep a night, if that, but this is _not_ the same as her mother's murder, this is justice for everyone else, this is _important work_ like she'd be doing in D.C. only she's doing it with less power and damn it if she's not going to give every victimabsolutely everything they deserve.

But Gates forced her into a day off, so she grabs her dishes off the shelves, wraps them in paper, puts them in boxes, jokes with Castle. Goes through the motions.

They finish the kitchen and head to her bedroom, rummaging through the remainders of her drawers.

"I forgot how cute you were," Castle eventually pipes up from behind her. When she turns to look, he's holding up a picture, her nighttable drawer open behind him. "I mean, you're adorable now, don't get me wrong, but nineteen-year-old Kate Beckett, skates on her feet? A sight to behold, really." There's a fondness in his tone, a deep love that always makes her smile and she perches herself on the edge of her bed next to him to look at the photo.

It's the picture just a few weeks before her mother's murder. She presses her cheek into Castle's shoulder as he sits next to her, raises her eyebrows to look up at him as he twists his neck to glance at her, pleased.

"Just before she died," she murmurs. Castle stills against her cheek.

"She looks happy," he offers. "Looks a bit like you - around the eyes."

"Hers were blue."

"But she's got your tenacity in there. Your kindness. And that smile? That's definitely the Kate Beckett 100-watt smile."

Her eyesight's suddenly a little blurry, but she murmurs, "All that from a picture?"

"What can I say? I know you well. I mean, your body, mostly, but your eyes a little too, I guess," he teases.

He quiets beneath her face, dropping his hands so they rest against his lap, picture still facing them.

"I'm never going to get justice for her, am I?" Kate breathes.

She can't see his face, but she knows that he's screwing it together in that way he does while he tries to gather his thoughts, get serious. "You could go public with the information you have about Bracken. Tarnish his flawless record."

She pulls back at that, turns him around so they're both facing each other. She has her legs crossed on the bed and he's twisted around a bit, feet still sitting on the floor. "I don't have all the information. If I went public, I'd either be accused to trying to attack him without giving him a defense, or of seeking attention. It's the same reason I couldn't attack him when he was alive; I don't have the proof."

This is not the first time Castle has offered this suggestion and gotten this response from her, but he's not one to sit back and let the world attack Kate, so, "We could find the proof," he offers in return.

"I couldn't find it when he was alive. It's bound to be a cold trail by now. The file is gone."

"We could-"

"Castle," she sighs. "There's nothing we can do."

"There's _something_ we can do," he argues, and suddenly he's standing, pacing around the room. "We can recreate the murder board, go talk to the people we couldn't talk to before. Bracken's dead, so the target's not on your back anymore. We can do things publicly, open the investigation officially, we can-"

"We can't." In front of her, Kate can see Castle coming apart at the seams, finally reaching that same realization she was struck with so many months ago, the same realization she's been carrying as a burden on her shoulders since January: no finality. Watching Castle hit that wall lifts some of the burden, though, and suddenly she's not falling apart, has no strong urge to fling herself at a case, run herself ragged. She's so damn _tired_, and sharing the burden helps. It does. It's the whole point of getting married, isn't it? 'Someone who could be there for me, and I could be there for him, and we could just dive into it together,' right? "There's nothing left."

He deflates, sits back down. "No justice," he murmurs.

"No justice," she repeats.

"This is so unfair to you. I wish..." He takes in a deep breath, releases it, one hand coming up to cradle her face. "I wish I could rewrite this one for you."

"What?" she says, quietly. "No enough drama in this story for you?"

"Not enough drama?" he scoffs. "It's a best-seller in the making. Political corruption? Hired hit-man? Police cover-up? The beautiful, brave protagonist gets shot just as she uncovers the truth?" They both take a second to breathe that last one in. "The ending is a little anti-climatic, though."

Kate breathes out. "Yeah."

"The protagonist deserves justice."

"The protagonist's mother deserves justice," she corrects.

"Is this why you haven't slept for the better part of three months?" he asks. Her head snaps up at that, accidentally pulling away from its resting place in his palm. "What? I've been shadowing a detective for six years, you think I didn't notice? I mean, she'd have to be pretty terrible at her job, if I hadn't picked up even basic observation skills in that time."

"Hey!"

He smirks. "New York's finest," he says fondly.

A blush creeps up her cheeks. "You didn't say anything," she says, instead of answering.

"I figured you needed time to grieve in your own way."

Grieving. Yes. Castle has, of course, finally put to words what she hadn't quite been able to since Bracken's death. She was grieving her mother's death all over again, grieving the fifteen years Kate had spent trying to find justice only never to get it, grieving time lost. She's suddenly outrageously, mind-numbingly exhausted.

"One last romp in this bed?" Castle offers instead. She rolls her eyes. "Why, Kate Beckett, I never. I meant sleep. One last _sleeping _romp in this bed."

He pulls back the comforter for her and she crawls to the head of the bed, crawls under the covers lazily. "Mmhmm," she murmurs. "Sure you did."

"Sleep, Kate."

She does.

/

"I wanted justice," she tells Burke.

The psychologist is quiet for a moment, taking her in. Her exhaustion, although reduced, is reflected in his face, and she takes the time to observe him, look over his face, the detective in her never quite quiet. He looks weary, bags under his eyes and a slight twitch in his left eye that she assumes is from the exhaustion. He looks weary, but his expression is carefully schooled, kind eyes turned on her. "You don't think you got justice?" he finally asks.

She opens her mouth. Closes it. She has her feet curled up under her on the chair, shoes on the floor, feeling - and looking, probably - like she's nineteen again, grieving over her mom. She is grieving her mom, she reminds herself. "I don't think- Her murderer, he, uh, didn't exactly suffer the consequences. He didn't pay for murdering her."

"Because he never served time." Burke's voice is quiet, encouraging.

"Because... Because he's still the hero of New York. Because nobody will ever know that he was a murderer."

"You'll know, though." He cocks his head to the side. "Don't you think that the fact that _you_, who sought to find the truth, knows it? Doesn't that speak to something?"

"Vincit omnia veritas," she murmurs.

"You found the truth, Kate. You have a great story to tell, maybe not publicly, but to tell the people who will listen and to pass on to your kids. Isn't that a kind of justice?"

There's really not a lot to say to that.

/

They're at the precinct again, the following week. She's been brighter, this week, happier, resting better, planning the last-minute details of her wedding and trying to squeeze information about the bachelorette party out of Lanie. They've been going home earlier, too, and it's only rounding on five o'clock now but the case isn't going anywhere. There's truth, somewhere in the pictures of the murder board, but distance from the case might be the best way to see it.

She nods her head towards the door. "Come on, Castle."

As always, he falls into step next to her as they head towards the elevator. "Where are we going?"

What she says is, "What? Suddenly the air of mystery isn't enough for you?"

But what she means is: "Forward."


End file.
